Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Levistus's_Leviathan" data-source="post: 9183488" data-attributes="member: 7023887">To me, it depends on what parts of "Dark Elf" you want to keep/feel are fundamental to the race, and then you can do pretty much anything you want from there. Is the defining feature of Drow their dark skin? Is it the fact that they live in the Underdark? Is it their religion/culture? Maybe you like most parts of the Drow, but just want to allow for more cultural complexity. In which case, I suggest you take an approach like Exandria or recent Forgotten Realms lore, where some Drow serve Lolth and are evil but some/most don't and can be as good or bad as humans. Additionally, in Exandria the cult of Lolth isn't limited to Drow and has members from other races like Humans and Orcs. If you like the Lolthite part of Drow but want to detach it from the subspecies, maybe just adopt that lore in your setting. Or, you want to take just the mechanics and appearance of the Drow but want to put them in an environment that their traits could make sense for. In Eberron, there's 3 main subgroups of Drow, and most of them don't live underground. The main drow faction, the Vulkoori, lives under the canopy of Xen'drik and worshipping a scorpion deity that fills a similar role to Lolth (except he may not exist, like the other Eberron gods). Or you could take their trait of living underground and want to focus more around that, possibly modeling them after Exandria's Pallid Elves or The Elder Scroll's Falmer, being an albino subterranean elven subspecies. I would personally probably merge them with the Grimlocks, being former Mind Flayer slaves that mutated to use hearing/smelling instead of sight to adapt to the darkness of the Underdark, but granting them the cultural/moral complexity of other elves. Or if you like Norse Mythology, just call Dwarves "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svart%C3%A1lfar#:~:text=Scholars%20have%20noted%20that%20the,(%22dark%20fields%22)." target="_blank">svartalfar</a>" and have them be related to elves somehow.</blockquote>

Verification